S. Koreans spend more time on games than rest of world

South Koreans play Pokemon a Go in a southeastern city of Ulsan. [Yonhap Photo ]

South Korea is well known for the high penetration rate for smartphones that contributed to a thriving mobile game industry. Now, mobile gamers here spend time on playing games for twice as long as the global average.

Data released by WISEAPP, an app analyzing research group, showed that South Korean mobile gamers spend 46 minutes daily, switching from and to more than two games. The group surveyed 24,956 Android smartphone users.

Other than mobile games, messenger apps were the second most used. A smartphone user spent about 35 minutes sending and receiving messages through the apps. Streaming service apps are used most frequently with an average of 25 minutes.

Helped by the quick distribution of smart devices, the global mobile game market has grown to 99.6 billion US dollars in 2016 and experts predict it will grow annually by an average of 6.6 percent.

In South Korea, the mobile game market stood at 3.9 trillion won (3.4 billion US dollars) in 2015. It is forecast to grow by more than eight percent every year until 2019. Mobile games are favored by South Korean businessmen as they can be easily played while on the go and require no desktop or console.
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Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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